Ryan Reynolds Says Parents Today Are ‘So Soft’ Compared to His Childhood

Ryan Reynolds is opening up about his and wife Blake Lively’s parenting style and how the way he processes his emotions has evolved over time.

The Deadpool & Wolverine star, 47, spoke at HubSpot’s INBOUND tech conference in Boston on Friday, Sept. 20, where PEOPLE heard him reveal an impactful moment that helped him understand his emotions better.

“I took a workshop on conflict resolution, and that changed my entire life,” the Wrexham co-owner told author and moderator Marcus Collins onstage. “I just didn’t know how to process things that I felt. Because I [had a] scarcity mindset when I was younger. I didn’t know how to unfold that thing in your brain that conditions you just always to win or be right.”

“Something I love about [conflict resolution], and I know this is not very fancy, but what I love about it is that you can meet somebody where they are, and you don’t have to be right or wrong,” Reynolds added. “You can disagree and still connect.”

Although Reynolds said that working through his feelings was something he learned to do as an adult, the same isn’t true for his children: “I have 4 kids and so far, none of them seem to have that [scarcity mindset], partly because they were born on ‘Easy Street,’ ” he said with a laugh.

“Parents today are so different. We’re so soft,” he continued. “I don’t yell. I grew up with like — it was nuts, it was an improvised militia.”

Reynolds went on to explain how things have changed for the better.

“Now it’s like, I can go look at all my resources for parenting and remind myself how to be perfectly compassionate,” he admitted.

Reynolds and Lively — who got married in September 2012 — are parents to daughters James, 9, Inez, 7, and Betty, 4, as well as son Olin, 1.

They have previously been candid about how they parent their children as well as how raising kids have changed them. Earlier this summer in an interview with PEOPLE, Reynolds revealed that Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy gave him some of the most important parenting advice he’s received thus far.

“Shawn Levy actually told me something that stuck with me forever, that people tend to only talk about their wins. But I think it’s really important for your kids in particular to know that you lose,” Reynolds told PEOPLE in June.

“You don’t get what you want all the time. Something you worked on really hard didn’t work,” he continued. “You feel like you said something embarrassing today, you did something that didn’t sit right with you. It’s just so important that [your kids] see that and they don’t just hear, ‘Oh Dad nailed it.’ Because you lose so much more than you win.”

Reynolds added, “It’s really stuck with me.”

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Elsewhere in his Friday conversation with Collins, the actor spoke about starting his production company Maximum Effort — and how the Deadpool movies played a major role in its creation.

“I love wearing the Deadpool suit, and I’ve refused to give it back. I worked 10 years to get the movie made, so I felt like if you want the suit back, come try and get it from me,” Reynolds joked. 

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“I began marketing the movie from home with a guy in the digital marketing department at Fox, George Dewey, who would later become my main partner in Maximum Effort,” he said. “… Somehow I started to fall into [marketing] by accident. And then I really fell in love with it.”

Despite his major success in his business ventures and at the box office, Reynolds added that he still doesn’t “know what I’m doing exactly.”

“It’s so easy to look back and talk about things like you knew what you were doing. You have to be nimble,” he concluded. “Everyone’s kind of f—— winging it.”